like the island

Today I’m going to ramble because for the first time in forever, I’m not being graded on structure or organization. Bear with me.

For those of you not keeping track of my life, you should know that I graduated from my university on Saturday. I received a very nice email from a professor just before my ceremony and I teared up a little at thinking I may never see a lot of my teachers again, but other than that I’ve been relatively cool and calm about the whole thing. The freakiest part about graduating is that I’m no longer an English major–a quality I’ve used to define myself for the past four years. I HAVE A DEGREE NOW. I’m like, qualified to do shit. I’m more educated than 94% of the world’s population according to one statistic. I don’t think any of my friends or I ever truly knew how crazy awesome that would sound when we arrived here four years ago.

I graduated Magna Cum Laude. I’m telling you this because it’s a big deal and I’m over being humble about my performance in school. I worked really hard–like, drove my self crazy and made myself ill getting those grades–and you’d better believe I wore that medallion around my neck all day on Saturday hoping that somebody would point and be jealous that he or she didn’t get one of those bad boys. It felt good to go out with all that bling.

The ceremony was long and our speaker was kind of dull and full of himself but I’m glad I decided to walk. It was fun to have the experience with my friends and the venue was so regal and pompous I almost forgot that at several points during my last two semesters at EIU, I was pretty displeased with my administration. The best part of the whole shebang was when our university’s President asked us all to join him in singing the alma mater and every single one of us looked around the room wondering what the hell that even was. Then he asked us to chant “WE ARE EIU” and after three tries and some help from the parents, we didn’t totally fail at doing so.

All in all, I had a good run here and now that it’s over, I’m a little sad to leave my friends that I’ve made but I know I’m ready for something different–maybe not bigger, maybe not better, but definitely different. Maybe a degree in adulthood.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what adulthood should look like. Mostly, it involves a lot of bill paying but there are other aspects of adulthood, I’ve come to find. Like bedtimes and dentist appointments. Worrying about insurance, in its various forms. (Today, I watched a Progressive commercial and paid attention to everything Flo said.) Keeping your home tidy, getting a reliable vehicle, finding a suitable cell phone plan, buying resume paper, wearing nice clothes to work, saving money, staying in on the weekends, buying groceries that don’t come exclusively from the freezer section, opening a credit card. A year ago, I would have cringed at the thought of having to go through this transition, especially because I don’t know how a person is supposed to date or do anything remotely fun on top of all this taking care of yourself bullshit and getting a decent-paying job. As of Saturday, though, all of these adult things seem like they’re going to be a great time. Maybe adulthood is just being happy with having to grow up.

Summer’s here, and that means most of Charleston’s population has returned home for the next three months. Subsequently, most of my neighbors are now gone and there’s lots of parking available at my apartment complex, which really just means that everyone still here started parking like a total jackass. Thanks to my newfound adulthood, I find myself more and more agitated every time I see a tire outside a line.

My roommate and best friend went home for the summer, but promised to visit frequently. Her room is empty and lonely-looking and seeing all of her stuff gone is really the hardest part of all of this growing up business. Her family’s been wonderful to me, and so have so many of my other friends’ parents. I’m going to miss my little family I’ve collected here. In a lot of ways, I’ve kept them closer than my actual blood relatives. They know me in all the ways my parents do, and all the ways my parents don’t. I love them so so so much and I’m sad that at the end of summer, all I might have left of them is a collection of pictures too small to encapsulate everything we went through together.